MILLIONAIRE’S VOLUNTARY EXILE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3022, 13 April 1926, Page 3

MILLIONAIRE’S VOLUNTARY EXILE.

RESULT OF EARLY LOVE ROMANCE.

London, April 10,

The sad story of Mr. Bayard Brown’s voluntary exile from- his native America reveals that it was the result of an early love romance. On Good Friday, which anniversary he always tenderly regarded, he is stated to have had a premonition of death, so he opened a secret drawer in the Valfreyia’s state room and withdrew a faded photograph of a woman, to which he applied a match and watched it slowly burn. He then crushed the ashes in his hand and virtually did not speak again. It is known that the photograph had been locked in the yacht since its arrival at England and that he also frequently gazed upon it in the secrecy of his state room.

When the end was near, the only words he uttered were: “I am not afraid of death.”

A significant action was a gesture of reconciliation with his family, after half a century, by arranging that the body should be conveyed to America and buried in his father’s-grave.

As a youth, lie was regarded as eccentric and when he fell in love, his eccentricity fell in his way and lie was jilted. Brown felt that his family’s attempt to restrain his original outlook on life was a menace to his freedom, so he left America, vowing he would not return. He remained steadfast to his vow, though once, lie nearly faltered. He ordered his yacht to sail for America, but changed his mind when he heard the captain clanging his orders to the engine-room. Twenty years ago, his two sisters journeyed from America, but they were not. allowed on board, Brown merely speaking to them from the taffrail.

It is revealed that he enjoyed life fully when young. He was a keen horseman and dancer and was musical. He had constantly lived in fear of visitors to the yacht and invariably asked: “Do you bring George or Louis?” of which nobody was able to interpret the meaning.